The battle for market-share doesn’t end in smartphones, Apple and Samsung are also neck to neck in the tablets market. And clearly Apple is on a losing battle. Released today, worldwide tablets shipments by IDC have Apple still leading with a declined margin from the previous 1st yearly quarter. As of Quarter 1 2013, Apple had a solid lead at 40.2% market-share and 19.5 million devices shipped with the rest shared among Android and other platforms. A meagre other platforms. Samsung seconded that with a 17.5% market-share with 8.5 million tablets.
Fortunes aren’t on Apple’s side this time round. Even though they still lead at 32% market-share and 16.4 million unit shipments, this is both a year on year decline in shipments and market-share. Rival Samsung on the other hand has maintained a steady growth with 22.3% market-share commanding 11.2 million shipments. Samsung has applied the same tactic on smartphones and tablets when tackling Applle’s lead, numerous price and specifications range making users have so many options. This also means there is almost always something new from Samsung.
Another thing that can be attributed to the success of Samsung is the Galaxy brand which has become too popular to the point of nearly overshadowing Android as a platform. Pricing and distribution also play a part there.
Asus maintained a third position with also a decline in year on year shipments and marketshare. For Asus these are quite small differences. Lenovo did increase, the numbers currently at 2.1 million from slightly over half a million same time last year. Amazon seems to be losing it’s streak as it went down from 3.7% to 1.9% with 1 million units down from 1.8 million.
Other players have wholesomely experienced some growth with an increase of 17.2 million up from 15.5 million last year.Overall, tablets shipments declined year on year for the two quarters with a -35.7% slump at 50.4 million units.
“The rise of large-screen phones and consumers who are holding on to their existing tablets for ever longer periods of time were both contributing factors to a weaker-than-anticipated quarter for tablets and 2-in-1s,” said Tom Mainelli, IDC Program Vice President, Devices and Displays. “In addition, commercial growth has not been robust enough to offset the slowing of consumer shipments.”
